Internet users skeptical of junk e-mails promising easy money, miracle cures and dream dates are right to be wary: The government says two-thirds of the "spam" messages clogging online mailboxes probably are false in some way.
The FTC said that spam e-mails involving investment and business opportunities are especially dubious, with an estimated 96 percent containing information that probably is false or misleading.
The FTC studied a random sample of 1,000 unsolicited e-mails taken from a pool of more than 11 million pieces of spam it has collected. The agency looked for deceptive claims in a message's text or the "from" or "subject" lines.
Twenty percent of the spam studied involved business opportunities such as work-at-home and franchise offers. Offers for pornography or dating services accounted for another 18 percent. Spam involving pitches for credit cards, mortgages and insurance was the third-largest category at 17 percent.
Junk e-mails are a rapidly growing problem, with the anti-spam company Brightmail recording 6.7 million instances of multiple unsolicited messages being sent out in March, a 78 percent increase from a year ago. The FTC plans a three-day forum to discuss how the government and businesses should deal with spam.
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Vivendi's U.S. media biz up for grabs: Giant media company Vivendi Universal officially hoisted a for-sale sign over its American entertainment empire, smashing the Hollywood dream of a French firm that slid from boom to near-bust.
Almost a year after the ouster of ex-Chief Executive Officer Jean-Marie Messier, who turned Vivendi from a water company into a media titan with huge debts, the veteran company fixer brought in to replace him pulled down the curtain on a three-year dalliance with Tinseltown.
Current CEO Jean-Rene Fourtou said Vivendi's future lay in telecommunications and French television -- not Hollywood -- and told shareholders it was "illusory" to think Vivendi could run a U.S. empire spanning Universal studios, theme parks and cable television from Paris.
Fourtou announced at Vivendi's annual general meeting that the computer games business would also be sold but that music may still be a part of Vivendi next year when he hopes to have completed the restructuring.
Fourtou said the company is already in talks with potential contenders for all or part of the U.S. media business.
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You may (not) have already won: A computer glitch involving American Airlines' online sweepstakes resulted in several thousand people being informed erroneously by e-mail that they had won a grand prize of 25,000 of the airline's frequent-flier miles.
An airline spokesperson said that all were customers who take part in the AAdvantage loyalty program. They received the erroneous notification sometime over the weekend, she said.
Only 60 grand prizes were supposed to be awarded. Each grand prize has a retail value of $700. As a goodwill gesture, American's parent company, Kellogg (K), will issue credits for 500 AAdvantage miles to each household that received the erroneous message, she said.
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Ericsson slashes jobs: Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson said on Tuesday it would cut thousands more jobs in response to a weakening market for its products.
The swift action by new Chief Executive Carl-Henric Svanberg showed the company's determination to adjust to the market conditions, investors said, and sent its shares soaring by 38 percent.
The world's biggest producer of mobile networks had its 10th straight quarter in the red, with an adjusted pre-tax loss of 3.5 billion crowns ($421.4 million) in the three months ending in March.
Talk of deeper job cuts grew when Svanberg, who focused on margins in his last post at lockmaker Assa Abloy, arrived three weeks ago. Ericsson's (ERICY) work force will fall to 47,000 next year from 52,000 planned for the end of 2003 and 61,000 now. Half of the new job cuts will be in Sweden. No particular area of operations will be singled out for the cuts.
Competitors such as Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia and Motorola of the United States also announced new but smaller job cuts in April because of the deteriorating market.
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And more job cuts: Europe's second-largest computer chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG said it would cut as many as 900 jobs, or almost 3 percent of its work force, over the next few months as it tries to lower costs amid weakness in the semiconductor market.
The chipmaker (IFX) said it would shed 500 positions in administration and 150 jobs in their cell-phone parts division, mostly in Sweden. Outsourcing and consolidating some other operations would eliminate 250 more jobs. Infineon employs more than 31,000 people.
The company, which has posted eight consecutive quarterly losses, said it would try to save $550 million through the measures.
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__ Students confesses hacking:__ A University of Chicago student pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets of DirecTV's most advanced anti-piracy technology, which later surfaced on a hacker website.
Igor Serebryany, 19, could be sentenced to as much as 10 years in prison, but the plea deal recommends probation, according to his attorney. Prosecutors were also seeking up to $146,000 in restitution to DirecTV, his attorney said.
Serebryany admitted stealing digital copies of hundreds of secret documents pertaining to DirecTV's most advanced access card while he was working in the Los Angeles office of a law firm representing the satellite programming provider, according to the U.S. attorney's office. He then forwarded them to a Web host for a hacker website, said Assistant U.S. Attorney James W. Spertus.
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Pioneer buys Globalstar: Wireless communications pioneer Craig O. McCaw is taking control of bankrupt satellite phone provider Globalstar in a $55 million deal, after Globalstar's creditors rejected two other bids for the company.
The deal, approved by a bankruptcy court, gives McCaw's ICO Global Communications a 54 percent stake in Globalstar (GSTRF), which burned through $4 billion before filing for Chapter 11 last year.
London-based ICO -- which counts McCaw as its chairman and international telecommunications companies and Microsoft founder Bill Gates as investors -- has been developing its own phone and data satellite service. It has launched two satellites, but one was destroyed during launch.
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Chinese Internet cafe operators imprisoned: A Chinese court sentenced two Internet cafe operators to prison for running their Beijing business without a license last June, when arsonists torched the shop and killed 25 people, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The blaze at the Blue Speed Cyber Cafe prompted a nationwide safety crackdown on Internet cafes -- many of which were operating illegally.
Under the verdict handed down by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, one of the cafe's operators, Zheng Wenjing, was sentenced to three years in prison and fined $36,145, Xinhua reported. The other operator, Zhang Minmin, was sentenced to one year and six months in prison and fined $24,100.
Last August, a Beijing court sentenced two boys to life in prison for setting the pre-dawn fire at the 24-hour cafe. The youths allegedly torched the business to get revenge after arguing with employees.
Compiled by Gabe Friedman. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
